Angola's central bank on Monday raised its benchmark Basic Interest Rate (BNA) by 25 basis points to 9.25 percent, citing a rise in February inflation, a growing stock of credit and a depreciation of the kwanza's exchange rate.
The National Bank of Angola, which last raised its rate in October 2014, also raised the rate on its standing facility for providing liquidity to 10.0 percent from 9.75 percent while the liquidity absorption rate was maintained at 0.0 percent.
Last month the BNA slashed the liquidity absorption rate by 175 basis points at an extraordinary meeting of the bank's monetary policy committee following the government's approval of its 2015 economic program.
Angola's inflation rate rose to 7.73 percent in February from 7.44 percent in January, with a 0.41 percentage point rise in the prices of food and alcohol the largest contributor to inflation. The government has forecast that inflation could rise to 9 percent this year.
The stock of credit issued to the economy in February rose by an annual rate of some 14.2 percent to 3.388 billion kwanza, the bank said, adding that the average exchange reference rate of the kwanza in February depreciated by 2.02 percent to 106.276 per U.S. dollar from January.
Angola, Africa's second-largest crude oil producer, is being hit by the fall in oil prices and the government has said revenue from oil will only cover 37 percent of spending compared with 70 percent in 2014.
The kwanza has continued to depreciate this month, trading at 108 to the dollar today, slightly up from a record low of 108.15 hit on March 27.

]]>InformedTrades Video News ChannelInformedTradeshttp://www.informedtrades.com/2012350-%5Bvideo%5D-millionaire-gun-club-%7C-cnbc-cnbc.htmlWill Gold Win Out Against the US Dollar? (Louis James)http://www.informedtrades.com/2012348-will-gold-win-out-against-us-dollar-louis-james.html
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 15:22:53 GMTOriginally Published by *Casey Research (http://www.caseyresearch.com/go/ujmsg-2/IDT)*It is an essential impossibility to solve problems created by...

It is an essential impossibility to solve problems created by excess debt and artificial liquidity with more of the same. That’s our credo here at Casey Research, and the reason why we believe the gold price will turn around and not only go higher, but much, much higher.

While fellow investors around the world may not agree with gold-loving contrarians like us, they are buyers: gold is up in euros and almost everything else, except the dollar.

The dollar’s rise has been strong and seems all but unstoppable. But look at it in big-picture terms, as in the chart below, and ask yourself how sustainable the situation is.

I’m skeptical of reading too much into such charts. A peak like the one in the early 1980s would certainly take the USD much higher, and for several years to come. But still, this is an aberration. It’s not the new normal, but rather the new abnormal.

More to the point, gold hasn’t collapsed since the dollar began its latest surge last July. Just look at this one-year chart of gold vs. the US dollar. The dollar is up sharply (in EUR, as a proxy for everything-not-the-dollar and for comparability to the chart below), but gold is only moderately down.

Gold has been trading almost sideways over the last year.

That might seem like damnation by faint praise, but it’s critically important. With the USD skyrocketing and commodities plummeting, gold should be dropping like—well, like a gold balloon—if the critics are right and it has no practical value at all, except to dentists and fashion accessory designers.

But gold is money, the best store of wealth millennia of human experience have devised, and more and more people are recognizing this.

Consider this chart of gold vs. the euro, which documents my contention that people outside the US do not see gold as a barbarous relic, but as an essential holding to safeguard their future.

Pretty much everywhere but in the US, gold is up, not down.

This chart supports my view that gold rebounded last November when it breached its 2013 low because international buyers saw that as an opportunity. The US has gone from primarily exporting inflation to exporting gold and inflation.

The fact that the dollar has risen faster than gold has dropped has important, positive effects on miners operating outside the US. If costs are paid in Canadian dollars, Mexican pesos, euros, or really hard-hit currencies like the Brazilian real, then those costs have just gone way down relative to the price of gold.

Of course, there’s a good chance that there’ll be more sell-offs before the gold bull resumes its charge… but they should be regarded as opportunities. Because once the gold market rises again, the best small-cap mining stocks have the potential to go vertical.

Watch eight industry experts discuss where we are in the gold cycle, and how to prepare your portfolio for gains of up to 500% or even 1,000%, in Casey’s recent online event, GOING VERTICAL. Click here for the video.

]]>InformedTrades Video News ChannelInformedTradeshttp://www.informedtrades.com/2012347-trading-outlook-today-march-31-moneyshow.htmlThe Channel That Suggests EURUSD Could Reach Parityhttp://www.informedtrades.com/2012343-channel-suggests-eurusd-could-reach-parity.html
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 14:44:55 GMTEURUSD recently bounced convincingly off the top of the channel that has bee in place over the past three months. If it is headed to the bottom of...

EURUSD recently bounced convincingly off the top of the channel that has bee in place over the past three months. If it is headed to the bottom of the channel, does that mean parity for EURUSD?

While I find this channel to be of interest, I think it is also worth noting that we are in a support zone going back to 1998 pre-Euro (i.e. Deutsche Mark) levels. If price hangs out here for a while -- i.e. a month or more -- we may be forming a base at this support level and ready to head higher.

The central bank of the Kyrgyz Republic left its benchmark discount rate steady at 11.0 percent, noting that even if inflation was slowing, the country's economy remains under the influence of external factors.
The National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic, which has raised its rate by 500 basis points since July 2014 to curb inflationary pressures from the depreciating som currency, said the economy of its main trading partners continues to slow down, impacting the domestic economy through the channels of foreign trade and lower remittances along with pressure in the foreign exchange market.
As of mid-March, the inflation rate eased to 8.6 percent from 10.5 percent at the end of 2014 with high economic growth in the first two months of 9.5 percent mainly due to rising output at the Kumtor open-pit gold mining site.
Excluding Kumtor, located about 220 miles southeast of the capital of Bishkek, the country's economy expanded by 3.8 percent, the central bank said.
The central bank added that it would continue to take appropriate measures to achieve a medium-term inflation rate of 5.7 percent.
The som began depreciating in August 2014 and was trading at 63.89 to the U.S. dollar today, down 7.8 percent since the start of the year.

"Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen signaled that the U.S. central bank will likely start raising borrowing costs later this year, even before inflation and wages have returned to health, but emphasized the return to normal interest rates will be gradual.***A downturn in core inflation or wage growth could force the Fed to delay the first increase to borrowing costs since 2006, the central bank's chief said on Friday, but policymakers should not wait for inflation to near the Fed's 2-percent goal before tightening monetary policy. The Fed has held short-term borrowing costs near zero since December 2008."

Below is a monthly chart of TLT, an ETF tracking long-dated Treasury bonds. Regardless of what the Fed does regarding interest rates, the monthly chart of TLT -- shown below -- illustrates how price has been in a channel going back to August of 2007; in other words, since the recession that led to the financial crisis of 2008 started. If this channel continues to hold, the recent bounce off the top could portend a move to the bottom of the channel, which would mean a price target of around 100.

This week (March 30 through April 4) central banks from three countries or jurisdictions are scheduled to decide on monetary policy: The Kyrgyz Republic, Angola and Romania. Following table includes the name of the country, its MSCI classification, the direction of the latest decision, the date the new policy decision will be announced, the current policy rate, and the rate one year ago.

The S&P 500 index is often used as a measurement of the overall performance of the stock market and also as a benchmark against which investors and fund managers’ performance is evaluated.

A press release from the S&P Dow Jones Indices reported a change to how multiple share classes in U.S. indices are treated for some companies.

Previously companies with more than one class of common stock were represented only once in the index.

Under the new method, companies that issue a second publicly traded share class may have more than one share line in the index (if they meet the liquidity and size criteria), but the index will still only be comprised of 500 companies.

Currently two companies, Google Inc., and Discovery Communications Inc. already have 2 share class lines in the S&P 500 index).

It’s anticipated that 3 more companies will have additional class lines added to the S&P 500: Comcast Corp., Twenty-First Century Fox Inc., and News Corp.